I bought a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive and installed it, and split the drive into 2 partitions, one for Data and one for Games. I have my OS on a separate drive. Things were working well for about 2 weeks, then one day I noticed a message flash in my Taskbar tray, too quick to read, but it was from Intel RST saying everything was working well. I then opened My Computer to look at my drives, and the drives on the above disk were gone. My heart stopped, I clicked on a bunch of stuff (don't you love it when a noob writes that), nothing worked so I rebooted. Everything came back, no missing data.

So I went to Google to try to figure out what that was all about, but it's over my head. I figured I would wait for a rainy day to figure it out since rebooting brought me back ok. Today it happened again, only this time things didn't come back after a reboot. I shutdown, did a little prayer, rebooted again, and things are back. This time I disabled the Intel service.

My question is, should I try to figure this out? I don't need RAID (from what I understand it is a backup setup). Should I uninstall the whole program?

Simply put, I'd say it's just Intels custom RAID & AHCI driver package, with more features and generally a bit better performance than Windows default driver. I guess the app/service is required for some of those features.

Perhaps there is a bad connection on the drive or motherboard or even a bad cable, and the Intel driver thought the drive was hot-unplugged (ie. live disconnection, a feature with SATA). So I'd say check those first.

Next time it happens, see if the drive is still powered up. It could be a bug in sleep mode for the drive or something that after it turns off, it just doesn't wake back up. Then the Intel RST thinks its been removed until its been power cycled. Try just unplugging the power and plugging it back in to see if it spins back up or not.

Ok, here is what I have done and the problem just happened again. I did each of these steps and let the computer run overnight, maybe even 2 days, and then it would do it again with no warning.

First I sent into Services and disabled the Intel RST service. Didn't help.Then I updated the driver for the AHCI SATA. Didn't help.Then i took the drive and plugged it into a regular Sata 3 port (it was in the sata 6 one). Didn't help.

Fubbhead, I didn't know how to check what you suggested.

Corrado, how do I see if the drive is still powered up? Listen? It's a really quiet drive.

I think what I am going to do is uninstall all the software that Asus bundled with the motherboard, at least the ones that I don't know what they do. Maybe the AI Suite II is over-riding my disabling of Intel RST. I don't know, i am really over my head here.

Ok. I never even knew that setting was there. I already have Never for both my monitor and putting the computer to sleep. Which by the way, one of my 8th graders got a science award for doing experiments on which saves more energy: using the sleep mode or turning the computer off. She said her findings were that Sleep mode provides a better energy savings. Just a side note

So I found the setting you referred to, I hope it applies to ALL drives. It didn't specify. And of course, I hope it works! Thanks for the suggestion.

Wow, that was an interesting article, but most of the people there were using RAID. I'm not. I just have 2 drives in my box, the second drive is partitioned and all the partitions disappear after a bit. But what I took away from that article is that I might be able to get help from WD. I have a simple setup: it should be a simple fix. Ha ha

I contacted WD, they emailed back saying it would be a day and I would get a response, but it may be longer because they are under a heavy workload at this time. I waited 4 days, and then sent a reply to that email saying that I really needed help. No response at all. (I did elaborate as to all the things I tried)

I had an extra drive that I could fit all the data on, so I put that in the computer, copied my stuff, and let the computer sit. After a few hours, the WD drive dropped out, but not the others, so I went back to Newegg and RMA'd it. I had one day left to do it

It does seem to me that it's the drive. I got a different kind this time a : Western Digital Caviar Blue WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive. I sure hope it doesn't give me the same problems. I was going to go with Seagate, but there was a lot of talk in the reviews about getting DOA's. And the WD was really quiet: I am hoping this one is also.